The Werewolf V2 (C1999)
by Nightmare daniell61
Summary: Same as the werewolf (C1999) however this is heavily modified per the original author to suit his desires (he did the writing not me.)
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER I DO NOT OWN THIS STORY.

Override

(c)1991 The Werewolf!

==== Introduction

An explanation is in order. This is the text (with a touch of editing)  
of the version of Override which was published in The Furthest Northern Crew APA over the period of a year. By my standards, it was heavily edited for sexual context and is at worst, PG. Some of the members of the FNC didn't agree and considered it pornographic... but as Tom Lehrer noted 'When it's properly viewed - everything is lewd' and I'm of the opinion that those who saw this as pornographic were clearly looking for something that just wasn't there - especially if you've ever read the unedited version of the first half (which should also be available here...).

I do hope to merge the two versions back into one and make it available as an Acrobat PDF file with illustrations and possibly even some animations... when this will happen? Who can say... I've been very busy with other projects. But until then, you have this version and with just a bit of imagination, I think you can fill in your own erotic scenes. :)

==== Chapter 1 - Another Fine Mess...

The moment I awoke, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. My head ached as if I'd gone five rounds with the guards in Secure Technical and then had a fine dinner of nitric acid and glass.  
Everything seemed to be out of place and it seemed as if there were more of me than there should be. I opened my eyes for a moment then winced them shut. The light was blinding.

I shifted and realised that I was in bed, under thin, glossy sheets. Something was particularly wrong with my nose... it went on far too long. The hair on my arms conspired to drive me crazy with itching and every time I moved something tugged at my belly. And what was that thing crawling under the sheets... did someone put a cat in the bed with me?

Lying there, I tried to think back and figure out what had happened. I had been in the sleep room wired into the system. My "horse" was a new contact in a fairly distant STC in the middle of a dead series of continua. As a "rider" my job was to fall asleep, let the computer link my mind to the mind of a selected entity in the target STC and then dream. my dreams would be recorded and then analysed to determine something about the culture and people in the STC before launching a sideshuttle to make a visit in person.

"Ok," I thought, "all fine and good. So, why am I here, and where is here?" I shifted and felt a lump at the base of my spine. "What the hell?" I thought, "What happened to me? If those bastards in Tech screwed up and..."

Gritting my teeth, I covered my eyes with my hand and slowly opened them. My eyes adjusted to the light. The room was clean and rather spartan. The light streaming in from the window was a peculiar shade of blue - almost a turquoise or a cyan. The colours in the room looked all right though. Where was I?

Sitting up, I heard the sounds of someone puttering in the next room - clinking sound and running water. It seemed much louder than it should have been. I pulled himself up to a better sitting position and grimaced at the double sensation of itchy hair and the feeling that somehow I had managed to sit on a broomhandle. I rested my arm on my lap and got the first shock... My arm was covered in a dense, glossy, black fur.

At the arm's end, a hand - clearly not my own - with short fingers ending in sharp-looking, black claws. The fur covered the back of "my" hand and crawled around to the pad which was much like a normal hand, but a bit more leathery. "Christ!  
Christ... Jesus Christ..." The name spun around in my brain like a mantra in the hopes that somehow I'd suddenly awake and be back in the recliner in Data Collection.

I felt my grip starting to slip when a feminine voice called from the other room. A part of me knew that I didn't understand the language, yet I did. It seemed as if someone was doing a voice over dubbing - I could hear both versions of the voice.  
"Hey... sleepy... when are you getting up?" called the voice.

"Uhm... soon... uh, hold on." I said. The same thing with my voice. Clearly not mine, I could hear what I intended to say in English and knew that what my mouth did and said was not that. I hoped it made sense to the female. "Ok," she called back, "but don't dawdle too long... you have to meet" - I heard a weird collection of sounds and my brain seized for a second then came up with "Stan at the university in two hours."

"Hours?" I thought to myself. "I wonder how long one of their 'hours' is?" I looked down at "my" arms and my chest. A thicker white fur covering my chest blended into a dark grey at my sides. Lifting the sheet away, I looked further down my body and saw a thick, furred mound starting just below where my navel would be and snake down to my groin. The entire thing was covered in fur just thicker than that covering my arms and was a snowy white continuation of my chest and belly fur.

That same white fur formed two patches on the inside of my legs which were otherwise covered in the same dark grey of my side.  
Between my legs was a heavy tail which twitched against my legs... that was what I was sitting on.

I reached out and touched the mound. It was soft and spongy...  
yet there was something hard within it. As I pressed, I felt a shock of pleasure and a small, clear drop of liquid oozed from the black skinned opening which stared back at me. I touched the liquid and pulled my finger to my nose. A long glistening strand of liquid pulled from the tip, stretched out then fell to my belly fur.

Just then, the female stepped into the room, brushing the fur on her chest and arms. Her fur was coloured much as my. Looking at her, I saw what looked much like a large wolf - crossed with a human. She was muscular, yet soft and rounded. She had no breasts to speak of, and her genitals were hidden in a furry mound. She walked on legs which seemed human enough, but with a peculiar bounding gait and moved to the side of the bed.

"Get up you lazy thing..." she said and gently struck me with the brush. I stood up and then fell back into the bed. It may have looked human enough, but the center of gravity was all wrong and I lost balance. Trying again, I managed to get up and stay up.

She put a clawed hand on my back. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I.. I think so. Just a touch of dizziness." She looked at me in a way which my host's brain translated as "oddly". I hoped that I didn't screw this up too much.

I entered the room from which she had just emerged. It was a bathroom with a shower and a sink unit. The toilet looked very odd, almost like a saddle. Any hope that I might avoid having to figure this out flew out the window. Whatever these creatures had for internal plumbing, they still had a bladder and this one was telling me that it wanted to be empty.

Closing the door, I approached the john and tried to figure out how to do this. A full length mirror in the wall across from the toilet showed me my host's body. I was pretty muscular myself and my genital mound was surprisingly large and firmly attached to my belly by an elastic swatch of skin. I thought for a moment about dogs and fire-hydrants as the pressure in my groin grew more insistent.

Then it struck me, my host must have been doing this for years.  
I tried to relax and let reflex take over. Something drew me to the toilet and I flashed a feeling of mounting it. I swung my leg over the saddle and realised that the flared front - the saddle's horn - was placed exactly in the right place to accept my mound. I leaned forward and pressed the mound into the opening and felt a wet slickness and then a flow of liquid as I relieved my bladder.

Pulling back, I could see my shaft. It was pinkish-red and mottled with blood vessels. Instead of the mushroom-like cap,  
there was a pointed tip with a too-large opening. I climbed off the toilet and found a foot press on the floor which flushed the unit. I stood up and saw my host's exposed "equipment"... they were very different from what I was used to.

I now realised that my tail was swishing about behind me. I turned to get a look from behind and saw that the grey side fur darkened into black over most of my back. She walked in at that moment and said "Don't fall in love with yourself... you're not that hot." and then swatted my rear.

This was not going to be easy...

My roommate (?) told me that she wanted what sounded like a jumble of singing and clicking which my host's mind identified as "bacon and eggs". Yeah right... chickens and pigs... I'll just bet that's what I'll find. It was only then that I realised that I was taking orders from her. I'd put up with that for now... obviously I thought it was normal or else we'd both be fighting it.

I started to pad out of the room when said "don't you think you should get dressed first? What is the matter with you this morning?" I looked around and saw a pile of cloth hanging on a hook which seemed familiar. Pulling it open, I decided it was a long robe-like vest and pulled it over my shoulders. It was actually more like a poncho with a hole for my head, but the fumbling about as I tried to pull it over my head must have seemed comical to my lady "friend". She started making a deep,  
rumbling sound in her chest which was translated into laughter.

She walked to me and gave me a long lick on my muzzle. I felt a powerful tingling in my sheath and my balls pulled up. Obviously the fellow was really hot for her. Her nose started quivering and she said "not now... we don't have time to get tied up for the morning... tonight. Now get down there and make breakfast"  
and gave my rear another swat.

I was getting real tired of her patronising manner./pre


	2. Out of the frying pan

==== Chapter 2 - Out of the Frying Pan...

Considering that this was a completely different world with a dominant species very different than my own, I was surprised how much alike we were. T

he kitchen was pretty much as any kitchen would be. The furnishings seemed primitive, but a few minutes of rummaging about and I knew that this was not exactly true.

Looking through the cupboards I discovered that many of them were temperature controlled. This explained the lack of something like a refrigerator. In one, I found a pack of eggs, a deep indigo in colour and almost perfectly round. I presumed they were eggs because they were hard and leathery.

Next to the eggs were strips of a fatty meat which had a rancid smell. My host's mouth started watering, so I presumed that he'd like them. What the hell. The cupboards under the counter contained some pots and pans and I drew one out. Now, all I had to do was find the stove.

I was leaning on a section of the counter covered in a sheet of dark glass when I felt the palm of my hand grow warm. Ok, I'd found the stove. Placing the pan on the glass, I laid the strips of meat on the pan and watched as it sizzled. The pan gained heat very quickly... too quickly for normal heating.

The meat started to blacken and crisp emitting a horrid stench. I grabbed the handle and yelped as the heat soaked into my hand. Christ, I thought, this isn't going to work. A panel in the wall seemed to empty into a chute so I scraped the burnt food into the hatch and explored the range.

There were a set of small strips placed in the surface and a touch changed the range temperature. Why didn't they put any indicators on this thing? These people didn't seem to be very safety conscious. This time I placed the pan on the glass and slowly slid my finger along the first strip until the pan started to warm. Several pieces of meat later and I managed to get this working.

The grease left behind from the meat worked well to cook the contents of the eggs which were filled with a uniform rust coloured fluid. It did cook into something like scrambled eggs so it must have been right. My host's lady friend entered the room just as I was dishing things up and setting the plates on the table.

The only cutlery was a long skewer and a very sharp, thin bladed knife. I could see how to eat the "bacon", but the eggs? She solved that one for me by going to a cupboard and bringing out a bag of thin pancake-like breads with a nutty scent. I watched as she sliced the food then put it onto a pancake, folded it up and began to eat.

I followed suit and we finished the meal in silence. I got the distinct impression that she felt that something was wrong but that she wasn't going to pry. Thank heaven for small mercies. After finishing, she waited as I cleaned up, but I couldn't find anything like a sink.

her eyes were on me as I moved about trying to figure out what to do and then suddenly she rose up and took the plates from my hand and put them, dirty, into a cupboard off to the side and pressed a small wood grain patch on the door. A second later she opened the door and removed two clean plates. "What is the matter with you this morning?" she asked and ran her hand over my head. "Did you bang yourself up?" She touched my nose and had me breathe into her face. "You smell all right, and no fever."

She looked at a decoration on the wall, told me that I should get going then handed me a sheet of hard plastic and glass. An expression which got translated as a concerned smile but looked more like a wolf baring its teeth crossed her face and she patted my behind again and told me to get going. I headed for the front door but she grabbed my shoulder and pointed to a door which looked like a closet. I opened it and walked down a flight of stairs into what looked like a small train station.

A pad on the wall looked familiar so I touched it. A gentle chime sounded and about three minutes later a small car pulled up with no driver. I got in and looked around for keys or a even a steering wheel. Nothing. Just then, a voice came from nowhere asking for a destination. I mumbled "university" and suddenly we were off. The car travelled mostly underground only going above ground to cross over a river.

There were other cars on the line and soon I arrived at another station. This one had writing on the wall which was angular and pointed. It reminded me of written Hebrew. The voice asked for a precise location in the University and I tried to suggest "the usual place", but the system wasn't buying it. I tried for a restaurant or something and finally it agreed to a library.

The vehicle stopped and I got out, clutching the slate-like object I had been given. The university did seem much like any I'd seen - people (or whatever) walking around, some in animated conversation, others just heading to someplace or another with determined expressions. The grounds were clean and well planted with trees. In the center there was a larger building made of a glassy material but with many open courtyards. The architecture was as if someone who had no idea of public safety has tried to design a building for maximal hazard.

The courtyards all were overhanging the grounds and none of them had any walls or railings. The building itself was shaped like a large plant with a spiral walkway winding its way around the "stalk" and each courtyard a "leaf" following the time honoured Fibbonacci sequence around the central pillar. As I approached, I could see that the central stalk was actually an elevator system as well as being the central support.

The overhangs were not obviously supported by anything other than the thin stems which attached them to the stalk - it was as if a plant had grown to impossible size and someone had built a building within it. Looking around, I noticed several people sitting and staring into slates much like the one I carried. Moving around to get a better view, I could see images and designs appear then disappear over the surface of the slate.

The person would speak to it - touch it and it would react to these commands. I spotted a shady and isolated area of the commons and sat down. Now that I was starting to relax, I noticed that even with this large tail, I didn't have trouble sitting. The appendage tucked itself under me and moved as I did to keep itself out of trouble.

Reflexes were a very handy thing to have when you didn't know the body. Running my fingers (claws... hmmm) over the surface of the slate, I noticed a small roughened spot which seemed much used... the area around it was smoother than the rest of the material. I fingered it and was rewarded to a scene of some neutral image - a logo of some sort with more of that Hebrew-like writing.

A voice whispered in my ear asking what service I required? I asked if it had a list of my appointments for today and a screen of text appeared. I couldn't read any of it. This was fast becoming tedious. Was the original inhabitant of this body a total moron? Surely he must have been able to read.

I asked the slate to read me the first appointment and to show me a map from where I was to where I had to be. The voice agreed and the image changed. I could see the large plant-building on the map and a smaller, more normal building to my right.

I followed the map as best I could and asked the slate to tell me more about myself. That request seemed to puzzle the slate for a minute or so. I interrupted its musings and asked it to tell me my name and where I was. It replied with a collection of sounds which got translated into "Alan" - my own name. That made sense.

I was then informed that I was in the central commons of the University... the slate said it with a capital letter as if there were only one university in the universe. "Fine," I said... "where is the university?" "In City," it replied. "And the City?" I continued, my exasperation growing by the second.

"On the West Continent on Earth." it finished. Earth? I asked for a map of Earth and that's what came up... it was Earth all right. Most of the lines we'd found in this area weren't much like our own - most either never formed planets or had them destroyed early in development.

It seemed too much a coincidence for so isolated a line to have managed that close a parallel. Based on the computer's map, I was right where I should be - in the middle of Saskatchewan near where Saskatoon would be. The site was selected because of the very low population and near perfect geology - flat and hard - no earthquakes. I was beginning to have more than a small nervousness about this... too many coincidences made me nervous.

I recalled the guide to my first appointment and asked the slate to review the meeting for me verbally as I made my way to the place shown on the map. According to my crystalline guide, I was supposed to meet my superior there for a debriefing on the previous night's contacts if any and to work out some new tests for contact detection. Oh ho... this sounded very familiar.

I asked the slate just what it was that "I" did. Apparently, I was a research scientist involved in something fairly secret. The slate didn't have much in the way of details of the work other than the fact that it involved some sort of new telecommunications technology and it required my sleeping over at the University many nights a week.

Even more familiar. It seemed that this little out of the way universe had an Earth something like my own and here I was - trapped in the body of a scientist-werewolf... Lon Chaney, eat your heart out. My destination loomed up, a smallish office built more like a building I was used to, only at a rather odd angle, or several odd angles... Looking at it too long made the fur on the back of my neck start to rise.

That must have been more me than my host. I entered the building and with a bit of help from my plastic pal, I found the office I was to report to and entered. "Alan... I hope you're feeling better." The voice was older but warm with friendship and belonged to a male who was a bit larger than I. His fur was greyer than mine and there were flecks of grey throughout the blacker fur of the top of his head and muzzle.

"Uhm, yes... I'm feeling better. Just a little dazed." I replied. He walked over and licked my muzzle and slid his paw under my robe. This was startling and I tensed up. He must have sensed this and withdrew his paw, looking concerned. "Alan, is something wrong?" he asked.

I tried to stall for a moment to figure out what to do next. Clearly, this older wolf and my host has some sort of physical relationship, but was it normal here? Even if it were, I had no desire to couple with another man, especially one who looked like a large wolf on two legs.

At the same time, if I did nothing, he would get suspicious. "N..no. I was a bit startled, I've had a lot on my mind of late," I said lamely. That was the wrong thing to say. He put an arm around me and started stroking the fur behind my ears. Damn it all if it wasn't making me drowsy and relaxed.

He took me in a hug and continued stroking my cheek fur and my ears and before I knew what was happening, I found that I was becoming very aroused. I was also starting to feel rather attracted to this old wolf and that scared me.

His hands moved over my back, touching and nestling into my fur, finding hidden spots I had no idea existed and raising my excitement to a fire. A moment later, we both had removed our robes and we made love, fast and hard, right there upon his desk.

First he took me, a frightening experience - and then I took him, much more hesitantly and uncertainty. We finished, gasping and holding each other as we slowly regained our breath.

We cleaned each other up and sat for a moment or two quietly hugging and licking each other.

Jillian entered and reminded Sam of his appointment and I said that I too, had to leave but that I wanted to see him again as soon as I could.


	3. Lighting the candle

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"==== Chapter 3 - Lighting the Candle...

Jillian gave me a little lick as I left and told me that it was good to see the professor and me together. It seems that it had been a while since the last time we'd enjoyed our company and that the professor had been missing me. She handed me my slate and I pulled my robe back on.

I asked her if she typically found the sight of two men engaged in that sort of thing so normal and her reply of "That sort of thing? You mean sex - what's unusual about that? You two are always... or I should say were always at it like rabbits. I think it's what keeps the professor so young." Now she was giving me that "what's wrong with you... everyone knows this"  
sort of look and I quickly made my way out.

She stopped at the door and asked, "Look, the professor's a great guy and he really needs you. You will be back more often,  
won't you?" I promised her that I'd be back and to my surprise,  
I meant it.

Wearily, I asked the slate for my next appointment and a map to get me there. It was fairly close on the campus and I arrived with minutes to spare. The slate had no information as to whom it was I was supposed to meet, and the building wasn't exactly small. I asked the slate if it had a summary of the building or records of my previous visits but my host seemed to have been all over the place and had past records of visits in several of the offices.

Running out of time and ideas, I tried something desperate.  
Questioning the slate, I found out that this device acted as a telephone by routing digital recordings of sound through the network and then back to sound at the receiver's end. Also,  
there was a log of calls outgoing and incoming. I asked the slate to try and figure out if I'd made any calls to any people here. The slate went dead for almost a minute and returned and explained that calls weren't tracked by position, but by owner -  
but that it had managed to get ahold of the current positions of the receivers of all previous calls within the past month and of them, four were within the building.

I was amazed at both the intelligence and the initiative of this machine. When I had more time I was going to have to find out more about what made this thing tick. I asked for a map to the four people and luckily three of them were in the same place. A quick walk and I was at the door to what seemed to be a laboratory of some sort. Through the glass plate of the door I could see the three the wolf-people, two males and a female,  
standing around what looked exactly like an EZ-Boy recliner surrounded with a ton of truly bizarre looking apparatus.

A knock brought the attention of the group and they waved me in.  
The door was unlocked and I stepped into the room and over to the group. "Knocking, Alan? This is your office too." said the female. Damn. Well, now I knew where I worked - whatever it was "I" did. I was praying it wasn't lab animal...

"Let's move to a meeting room and start the debriefing," said the older of the two males. I followed them out of the room and down the corridor to a rather pleasant meeting room with chairs clearly intended for comfort and for the anatomy of these beings. The central table was lower than I would have expected and at the front of the room was a large grey-glass wall-hanging. If that was art, then at least there was one thing we were ahead of them in.

Alas, it wasn't art. The older male, clearly the leader of this little pack, barked out a command and the screen brightened into the neutral network-logo I had seen on my own slate. I lifted my slate and whispered if it could record all this and it whispered back that all the data was already available on-line.

Sitting back in the chair, I watched as the large slate began recounting the previous night's events. I watched as "I" entered the room and removed my robe then climbed into the easy chair. I had a momentary fear that I would be watching some form of pornography, but instead the other three wolves came into the view and started applying a small headpiece to my head which seemed to sit over my skull and then around my temple and under my long jaw.

Along the bottom of the screen were all sorts of symbols and squiggles in their language and occasionally a chart or graph would overlay the image then quickly either fade away or reduce in size and march to a lesser position along the sides of the image. It was clear that I was falling asleep or being put into some form of sleep state. This was beginning to look frighteningly familiar.

A voice came from the slate and narrated the events and confirmed my suspicions about the experiment. "I" was being put into a special form of REM sleep. That was the first step of Riding. Still, it was possible that this was simply some form of sleep experimentation or some crackpot psychic experiment, so I sit still.

As the video played, a set of symbols in the lower right seemed to go in cycles - my guess was that it was a clock of some sort and suddenly, it started running a lot faster. The leader-wolf stated that nothing significant happened from this point until the "event" about an hour later. The display slowed back to real time and a new chart which seemed to indicate EEG popped on the screen to join the others which I now realised were respiration,  
temperature and possibly EKG.

A minute went by and then all three charts went nuts. The EEG chart, which had been showing the nice steady waves of pre-REM sleep and then an explosion of nearly random waves all over the chart. The form on the recliner suddenly began convulsing and thrashing about. The respiration chart was almost flat and the EKG sped up to clearly a dangerous level. One of the group and two other wolves rushed into the room and quickly started shutting down the experiment but before they had finished, "I"  
had one more, large convulsion and then collapsed into the chair. The graphs rapidly returned to their original state, and if it hadn't been recorded, there would be no way to tell anything had happened - my host hadn't even awakened.

The finished removing the equipment and then I was lifted onto a stretcher and removed. The playback ended there.

"That was two nights ago. You were taken to the hospital where you were kept overnight and except for some dizziness and confusion, you seemed all right." said the female wolf. "How do you feel today?"

"Dizzy and confused," I replied with a grin. "Mostly disorientation and I'm having trouble remembering things, but it comes and goes." There. That should help cover things up as long as I'm not expected to read anything. "I'd like to take some time and go over the notes for the experiment."

The other male and the female looked at each other and for a second I was afraid that I'd committed another, possibly fatal faux pas, but they seemed to shrug it off and the three agreed.  
We decided to meet again in four hours and then we left. I started back to the lab when the female grabbed me by the shoulder and spun be around the other way. "Your office is that way," she said. "Uh, right," I said.

As soon as I was more alone, I asked the slate for directions to my office. It was interesting that with all the questioning about this place, the slate never thought to tell me that I worked here. Arriving at my office, I entered to find a rather spartan room with a larger slate on one wall and what seemed like smoked glass on another.

I closed the door behind me and propped the slate up preparing to ask it some pointed questions. Before I could activate it,  
the wall screen lit up with the net-logo and the same voice as my slate asked if I needed anything.

"Are you the same as my slate?" I asked. "Of course," it replied. "Hey, why didn't you tell me I worked in that building?" You guessed it... "You never requested that information." You didn't ask. Sheesh. At least some things don't change across alternate earths.

"Ok, my silicon friend, you and I are going to do some research."/pre 


	4. Of wolves and men

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"==== Chapter 4 - Of Wolves and Men

The technology behind the computer system of which the slate was a part was simply incredible. I also started to realise that in many important ways, the wolves' culture was both very much the same as the one I had left behind and just as much, very different.

There had never been a Rome or a Greece in the same sense I knew them - it had been more as if the Greeks had been interested in real world experimentation as well as pure theory. Rather than being conquered, they swept out around what would have been 500BC our time and, in effect, conquered by virtue of simply being able to fix all the problems of each culture they met.  
Sort of like a world-wide cargo cult.

With each passing generation, the other wolfen cultures became assimilated into the central culture and then added to the storehouse of intellect which, rather than spending all of its time conquering each other, turned outwards. Their entire belief system was based on carrying order like seeds. In some ways this was horrifying - fanatical order freaks trying to make the whole universe a nice, safe and enlightened place to live - in others though, they had no war to speak of, no crime other than that committed by lunatics, and no wasted potential.

Other interesting differences started popping up. Originally,  
this was a matriarchy and while technically, there was equality of the sexes, there was an almost compulsive need by males to defer to females, especially when the females went into heat.  
Another difference there.

A side effect of that was that sex and reproduction were far more separated than for humans. Since sex could only create offspring once a year for these beings, and since that was generally at the same time each year, in early winter for a fairly short time, the species defocused its attention from sex and also seemed not to develop the same hangups about it we did.  
It was common for friends of any gender combination to express friendship sexually. That explained the professor.

As well as a strong science and technology bent, their culture also strongly encouraged art in almost any form. Plays in parks,  
open air education, movies and animation, music of all forms were viewed and practiced by a huge proportion of the population.

Although they were clearly carnivores, they did not kill animals for their food. Much like the Ancient Greeks they seemed to resemble, they also believed in what would have been called "Anima" back home - a soul or life-force which all animals had.  
Their knowledge in genetics had made a fusion of animal and plant and it was through these meat growing plants which all of their protein was grown.

Another critical difference - the original culture was a matriarchy and it was the female half which ruled the planet until only several hundred years ago when males were given their freedom. Given the sexual behaviour, this made some sense... the women controlled the males through their estrus - I'd be willing to bet that the females on this planet generated that scent whenever aroused.

I sat back in my chair as the wall-slate reeled off statistics and history. This was an amazing place - nothing like it had been found in any of the cross-time excursions to date. Most of the other Earth's were either almost exactly like home, with small variations in history, completely uninhabited or not even there. Nowhere had we found so alien a culture and non-primate sentients... It was as if this Earth had been inhabited by aliens.

The screen had moved on to art and literature and was in the middle of some shockingly explicit erotica. I found myself becoming aroused and decided to take the opportunity to explore this body a little more closely.

I opened the robe, a common form of attire here, and let it slide off of my shoulders. I sat naked in the chair and leaned back. My hand touched my chest and slowly dug into the thick fur. Scratching and stroking... it was a luxurious sensation, I moved my hand down my chest to my belly and that mysterious sheath.

Being so much the wolf, a thought flickered through my mind...  
something so improbable, so dog-like... I slowly moved my muzzle down, arching my back and raising my hips... to my surprise, my lips easily moved over my sheath as I opened my mouth. A part of my mind was reeling... It was easily the most incredible sensation of my life. .

I must have been quite the sight - a large male humanoid wolf in a recliner chair with his legs spread wide apart, his muzzle pressed to groin, but the pleasure was insane - how could any animal endure such numbing ecstasy.

I felt a warm, happy exhaustion and lay back in the chair just trying to imagine how lucky I could have been to drop into this universe. A couple more of these surprises and I might not even try to get home.

The female wolf in the lab team, whose name would be unpronounceable to a human but who could have been called Ruth,  
was busy going over the recordings from Alan's mishap trying to figure out what had happened. Her review of the circuitry was confirmed by her slate as being completely safe.

Suddenly, the slate interrupted her musing. "I have important information for you," it said.

"Yes?" she replied to the slate.

"The person you know as 'Alan' no longer matches my records,"  
the slate stated in an even tone. "There have been a number of changes in behaviour and in his brain-wave functions."

Ruth suspected something like this. "Was this change caused by the accident?"

"There is no evidence to substantiate such a conclusion.  
However, the timing of the changes would indicate some correlation."

Ruth pondered this information. "Inform the other members of the team and continue monitoring 'Alan'. See if you can discover what changes have occurred. Hopefully, the damage isn't too great and we can cure this."

I was still lolling in the glow when my reverie was broken by the slate asking a question: "Excuse me, is there any part of the display you would like repeated?"

I was going to ask to see the erotic art again, but thought better of it. This body had a mind its own and that clearly wasn't mine. I asked the slate to review the current project which had caused all this. A presentation was run which confirmed most of my suspicions./pre 


	5. All the worlds a stage V5

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"==== Chapter 5 - All the Worlds a Stage...

They had stumbled across the same basic ideas we had. Some people seemed to be better attuned to the multiple universes and could drop into a form of synchronisation. The multiple universes lay "in the same space" so to speak, but separated by distance in one of the rolled up dimensions which made up the 11-dimensional multiverse.

These people tended to have amazingly consistent dreams of these other places and the uniform feature that they seemed to live out a life which was nothing like their own within the dream. At first, it was believed to be a particularly well formed psychosis, but as more of these people, as rare as they were,  
started showing up, one pair shook the foundations of science.

They were having parallel dreams from two entirely different,  
but internally consistent points of view - as if they were two unrelated people experiencing similar things in the same city.  
The two subjects lived in different cities in different parts of the world - there was no apparent relationship between them and when introduced, they clearly had never met and did not recognise each other.

Moreover, the two people they were in their dreams did not know each other within or without of the dream, yet their accounts of events within the dream world were far too consistent to be coincidence. Finally, the two subjects were asked to recount events in the newspapers of that world and it turned out that their dream-selves happened to live in the same city and read the same paper. They recounted almost verbatim, the same headlines and events.

It was clear that something outside normal science was going on here.

Several years later, the first quantum mechanical models for this effect, based on the Copenhagen interpretation of state collapse were put forward. These new models posited that each universe has a base energy level which was reflected in a sort of base-line vibration. Some people, it seemed, could achieve a state where their brain filtered out the base-line difference -  
especially during sleep. If someone in whichever universe the subtracted vibration happen to match was physically near the simple 4-space co-ordinates in the unfolded part of space-time and happened to also have this ability, there would be a sort of synchronisation and the two would share each other's experiences.

It was later realised that many schizophrenics actually were suffering from this problem, as were almost all autistic people.  
Once this had been identified, a simple treatment which suppressed this wave function resolving ability immediately cured these people and led to the beginning of the "Rider Corp",  
joking called the "5th Sleepwalker's Cavalry."

Equipment was devised to control the harmonic base-line removal and thus select which universe was being sampled. Many attempts to create machines to do the same work or to view directly into these alternate universes, as the media had inaccurately nicknamed them, had failed. There was something about organic neural networks which was necessary for this and it was in 2051 when the link between the quantum states of carbon and the resonance reduction effect was identified.

Building synthetic neural networks out of carbon based materials seemed somewhat pointless when living neural nets already existed - the autistic people who had lived most of their lives in these alternate universes. They had so much affinitry for these alternate worlds that their on;y "cure" was to caryy a device which perpetually jumbled their resonance states to keep them in this universe.

Later, it was found that almost everyone experienced this effect to some degree, only that for most, the experiences were very short lived and tended to get blended into the normal dreaming activity.

The same devices which helped focus schizophrenics and autistics could be used with "normal" people and allow them to focus into specific universes.

The scientific community began researching this in great detail and set up a facility to house and sensitives. After much work,  
the wave equations which described the effect and applied to a mechanism which allowed finer tuning and accurate repetition of visits.

According to the current model, there was an infinite continuum of universes, but the nature of the 11-space forced specific frequencies as if there were quanticised energy states. Each state contained a specific universe which was most like those which lay at exact multiples of the frequency of the first universe.

While making the calculation of precise destinations difficult,  
it also created a bit of a mystery - what caused these resonant universes to be the same while the virtually infinite universes between the resonant set ended up so different.

Worse, in some resonant sets, like the one this Earth belonged to, none of the universes had Suns which formed planets - no Earths. So why was this one here?  
br /  
That's what I was researching when all this happened. The tuning on this world was so critical that getting a fix on it was nearly impossible - last night was the first time we'd managed to hit it right on the button.. Or two nights ago, I suppose.../pre 


	6. your place and mine

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"==== Chapter 6 - Your Place and Mine

The slate interrupted my presentation and politely informed me that Ruth wanted me to meet her in the main lab. I quickly put myself in order and walked to her office. Her expression was already pretty unreadable, I still hadn't worked out how these lupine faces communicated so much with so little expression...  
but hers was even more impenetrable than usual.

"Yes, Ruth?" I asked.

"Sit down, Allen... We have to talk."

Already I didn't like the direction this was heading. She knew.  
I could tell immediately that she knew I wasn't Allen. Hell, I couldn't believe it had taken this long.

"I think you know what we have to talk about," she said. A wave of numbness flooded over me and I nodded my agreement. "Who are you?" she asked directly.

"My name is Allen," I told her, "but when I try to say it, the guy who owned this body's name keeps coming out. His brain is translating a lot of stuff for me so I can't tell what I'm actually saying."

She looked at me as if I were some strange new insect. A sound much like "uhm hum" was all that she said as she nodded for me to continue. I sighed and began telling her the story. I guess that getting caught made it easier to talk, I was tired of trying to tapdance though this nightmare. Through it, she stopped me and asked a pointed question or two, but for the most part, she sat impassively listening to all the detail.s.

When I finished, she gestured at the slate on the wall and it divided into several sections and the tother wolves in the research group appeared.

"What do you think?" she asked them.

"I think he's telling the truth," one of the older wolves comment. Several of the other nodded agreement. "Ask the slate,"  
he continued.

The slate spoke for itself and noted that based on brain wave and temperature scans, it believed with a good level of confidence that I was telling the truth. That was a relief.

"Allen... I know you're not really Allen, but I don't know what else to call you," she said, "I've contacted your mate and told her that you'll be staying overnight at the clinic. She wanted to talk to you, but I suggested that you had a very bad headache and that you shouldn't be disturbed."

"You may as well call me Allen, when you do I hear my name." She nodded. "My mate... Hmmm."

Ruth spoke quietly in the desk slate and several new people walked into the room. "Allen, these are several collegues of mine specialising in sociology, history, psychology and general science. Would you be up to talking to them about your world and how you got here?" I nodded this time. "Good. We've got to find out why you're here and how you got here." She turned to the tallest wolf,"Stan? Could you set him up with a comfort suite at the residence?" Stan agreed and moved to the side, talking to his personal slate.

She stood and lead the pack out into the corridor into a set of connected rooms. A quick check of her slate and she rattled off a list of times and places. This was one organised group. The first was the sociologist who asked me all sort of detailed questions about my culture, how our families were set up, what we considered important, how we lived our lives. I tried to answer each one accurately, but I have to admit, some of the questions caught me off-guard. It walk like trying to explain how to walk or what the colour red looked like; it sounded simple, but was too obvious to really make sense.

After the sociologist came the historian. Some of his questions struck me as a repeat of the sociologist's but with a shift in focus. At one point, he called in a linguist to help with some of the words which didn't translate well into their language.  
The linguist immediately asked to be added to the roster as she excitedly tried to build the twisted vaguely English sounds into something similar to her own language. She wasn't even close.

We got further with writing. For some reason, while speech was getting translated, motion oriented actions weren't. I found that with a little practice, I could write English words and entire sentences. Within an hour, I was doing a fair impression of my own handwriting, although the influence of an arm not my own was distorting it. The only problem was that I couldn't read what I had written. The letters and words looked familiar, but for other than my knowing what I'd written, I'd have no idea what the words meant.

I left the linguist with samples of English she had collected by pointing to things and having me write the word for the object with my eyes closed. Clearly, she was excited and eager to do more research... I was less enthused.

The evening ground on with one after another scientist tramping into the conference room asking a barrage of questions. By nightfall, I was starting to develop on massive headache and asked Ruth for something to help. She ordered a herbal tea which did help the headache, and then suggested that I get some fresh air and go for a walk outside.

This suggestion surprised me. I asked if someone would supervise me and that surprised her as much as her suggestion had surprised me.

"Supervise you?" she asked. "Why?"

"So I don't run away, of course," I replied.

"Run away.. to where?"

She had me there. In this culture, I stood out like a sore thumb. I didn't know how to write or read, I didn't know the customs... Hell, I didn't even know if the used money. I hadn't found any in my hosts pockets.

"Look Allen," she said to me, "You're not a prisoner here. It's obvious to us that something messed up and our Allen and you have, well, switched places." I must have made a face at that suggestion because she continued quickly, "Yes, yes, I know that you and he can't have actually switched places, but something is making it seem as if you two were. What we need to do now is find out what caused it, and how we can get you two back where you belong."

I nodded. I thanked her and told her I'd be back fairly quickly.  
She handed me Allen's slate, reminding me that without it, I would be in trouble if I got lost.

The night air was cool and it did help my headache. There were still people walking around the campus and from over in the Quad area, I could hear the groans and sounds of people engaging in lovemaking. This body had an amazing night vision, even though it was dark and there was little lighting, I could still see fairly easily and clearly, just that everything was in greys.

I strolled for a bit then found a nice, quiet clearing in some very fragrent trees and lay out on the soft grass. I must have dozed off for a bit because I awoke suddenly to the slate's voice telling me that I had an incoming message.

"Go ahead," I told the slate. Ruth's face appeared on the slate and she told me that I'd been gone over an hour and asked if I was alright. I said I was and that I would return right away.

When I got back to the lab area, only Ruth and several members of the research team were there, talking about something and calling up schematics on the main wall slate. Clearly, they were onto something.

"Allen, I know this will be difficult, but can you tell us about the brain structure of your people?" asked an older, black furred wolf who's name wouldn't come back to me.

"Uh... sure," I said, "but I'm not a doctor - I'm no expert on anatomy."

The black wolf nodded and asked me to give it a try, handing me a pencil-like stylus. I took the pencil and started drawing out on the slate what I could remember of the human brain from the one anatomy class all Riders have to take. After several minutes, the sketch was pretty close to what I remember.

Ruth looked at the drawing and asked someone named Judith to come in. A few minutes later, a surprisingly attractive female wolf-person in greys and tans walked in and I was surprised to feel my body responding to her. She looked at the drawing I had made and called up a split screen showing my brain drawing and a drawing of what I presumed was their brain structure. They didn't look anything alike.

What I took to be the medulla oblongata was much large and formed nearly an entire extra lobe sandwiched between two smaller, flatter lobes. Judith noted that it was this lobe which gave them their excellent orientation and position skills.

"Your what?" I asked.

"Haven't you noticed that you always know what direction you're pointing in?" she asked.

"Uhm, no, actually. In fact, quite the opposite, I've been lost since I got here." I replied.

Ruth nodded her agreement. Clearly, I was missing something that everyone else took for granted. Judith sat down and explained.

"Our people have a structure built in this section of the brain which allows us to have perfect direction. Our ancestors were nomadic animals who migrated long distances. This structure is what led them back to their traditional mating grounds each year. It's based on the magnetic fields of Earth. You really don't feel the direction?"

I shook my head. I honestly didn't.

Judith tried a couple of simple experiments where she set me up in a direction, blindfolded me and spun me around and asked me to reorient myself. Naturally, I couldn't. This seemed to shake her.

"Gods, how can you stand not knowing which way is north?" she asked.

"It's no big deal, none of my people can do that." I thought for a moment,"Actually, I guess some can, but most can't."

Ruth called the meeting to a close and suggested that we all quit for the night. We were getting close and if we didn't take a break, we'd end up blocking. I agreed, I was pretty tired.  
Judith volunteered to lead me to my suite.

She showed me the amenities and how to call up food if I was hungry. To my surprise, she waited for a long moment after finishing.

"Allen, are you really from another world? Another Earth?" she asked.

"Yes, it would seem so. I've never seen any beings like you on any of the Earth's I've seen." I answered.

"I could tell that you find me attractive," she said.

I felt my ears burn. I guess that was as close to blushing as these people could get. "Uhm... well..." I stammered. "Yes, I do. How did you know?"

She chuckled, a surprisingly lovely sound, and then touched her nose. "I could scent it. Not to mention that your jaw dropped and your eyes tracked me around the room." She laughed. "Would you like to mate?"

I was stunned. I just nodded without saying anything.

"I take it that your people aren't so open about such things."

I shook my head no.

"How sad that must be," she continued and walked me to the bed.

The next morning, Judith and I joined the others. The two physicists were arguing about how the energy system which is formed when a Rider synchronises with a Horse can only allow one way information transfer, from the Horse to the Rider.

"But there were two Riders in the system trying to use each other as a Horse!" shouted the first, an all grey, male wolf-person.

I chuckled. They had taken up the Rider's jargon and were using it without thinking. Well, at least there was one area in which we were ahead of them.

The other physicist, a red-furred she-wolf person, seemed stymied. "Look, in that sort of a situation, neither should have been able to get through. The resonances wouldn't be able to form!"

Grey sighed and sat down while Red glowered at him.

Ruth stopped the shouting and asked a couple of questions about what kinds of things could interfere with the process.

Grey spoke up: "Hmmm, any high energy field such as a magnetic field or an electrostatic field."

Red joined in: "Or metal in the transfer field."

Ruth turned to me and asked, "Anything click there?"

I said no, but I told them something was bugging me about metal.  
"We don't use metal in the helmets - it's all plastics except for the field coils. No magnetics or electrostatics."

"We use ceramics, but all non-metallic, silicates only. We don't use external field coils, we embed them into the ceramic," Ruth commented.

I nodded and thought... What is it about metal in the field? The transfer field envelopes the head. No metal in the brain. I didn't have any metal inserts or electronic implants. What was I missing?

The slate chimed and told us that a breakfast was ready. Ruth asked if it could be brought in and a moment later, a panel in the wall opened to expose the hot food. I must have stopped listening to this body, I was hungry.

We each took a tray and sat at the large common table. We continued to discuss what could have interfered. Eating with this lupine mouth was a strange experience. The muzzle was longer than a human mouth and the teeth more widely spaced. It was harder to chew and keep my mouth closed.

I stopped... teeth. Widely spaced teeth wouldn't have as many cavities. Cavities needed filling... Fillings were made of metal. My jaw dropped as did my fork.

Everyone turned around to see what had happened.

"Dental work. What do you people do for cavities in your teeth?"  
I asked. That seemed to stop them. "Does anyone have a mirror?"

No one did. Ruth suggested that I use the slate's video to take a snapshot and then play it back. Instead, I asked each in turn to open their mouths and let me look... Not a single black filling anywhere. Nor any ceramic patches...No crowns. No dental work at all.

I groaned and explained that when our teeth developed cavities,  
we filled them in by drilling away the damaged dental material and then filling it in with an almagam of silver and mercury.  
Red looked both disgusted and excited. There was her metal.

"We don't chop out pieces of tooth," she said. "Instead we use a bacterial paste which contains organisms which eat the damaged tooth then regrows the enamel."

"That explains it. You've never had fillings." I said.

She nodded and continued, "Ok, now we know what went wrong. The combination of two Riders trying to ride each other with the bits of metal in his," pointing a thumb at me," teeth caused a peculiar resonance effect. The result is that they've both opened a permanent channel and are controlling each other."

Ruth hummed an agreement. "Yes, which explains why Allen can't read or write our language, not all of his brain components match up and not all of them are exchanged. It also explains why he can control his body functions and why he can talk and move around with little problem, our Allen's brain is running that and handling translations. Ok team, how do we fix this?"

Grey looked at me. "Well, his people are way ahead of us on this stuff. Ask him."

I shrugged my shoulders. "First, I'm a Rider, not a tech or a scientist. I know the basic principles, and I could, in a pinch,  
build a transciever, but that's not the same as being an expert.  
Second, this has never happened before. Your's is the first Earth ever to have discovered Riding other than our own."

Grey sighed. "So far..."  
br /  
I paused. "Yes, so ¯far."/pre 


	7. a light at the end of the tunnel

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"Chapter 7 - A light at the end of the tunnel...

I returned to the lab and tracked down Ruth. We nailed down the details of a plan to switch "Alan" and myself back to our proper worlds. The plan required one thing than none of us could guarentee... his cooperation.

We knew that our two minds were still linked - there was no reason to think otherwise. This body hadn't changed so there was no reason to believe that my real body would have changed. I should be able to link with my body and its Rider when I fell asleep tonight. *This time, I wouldn't be drugged as part of a treatment for shock.

I finally got the courage up to go "home". Ruth had called my "wife" to tell her what had happened. She seemed to take it well, all things being considered.

Thanks to Ruth's help and the slate's instructions, I made my way back via the underground shuttle and walked the flight to stairs to the ground level. I was back where I started just one day ago.

The room was dark and my eyes adapted quickly to the dim lighting. I could see Sarah sitting on the couch - even in the darkness I could see she was tense.

"I...," I started. I wasn't at all sure where to go with this.

"Do you know if he's alright?" she asked.

"Uhm, well, if I made it then he should have as well. Mind you,  
this has never happened before." I felt that I should tell her the truth.

I moved to her side and sat on the couch, carefully arranging my tail. The moment was terribly awkward. "I'm sorry," I said to her.

"You look exactly like him," she said quietly.

"That's because I am him, or rather, this is his body. I'm just a guest." I replied.

She looked at me strangely. I felt that she would strike out at me. That was a pretty stupid thing to say. She tensed up then relaxed, looking like a balloon which had been deflated.

"I guess I needed to hear that," she said. "Is it possible to get him back?"

"I don't know. It should be possible - the fact that I'm here proves that, but we don't know how I got here. Ruth and the others in her team are going to try and figure out what happened." I told her.

I explained that I was a Rider and that dropping in on people in other time-lines is what I did for a living. I tried to reassure her that with my knowledge of the technology involved, which was way ahead of theirs, and with Ruth's help, there was a good chance that I would at least be able to contact him back home.  
My home.

This seemed to calm her.

She asked about my home - she wanted to know what kind of world her mate had landed in. So, I told her all about my home and my friends, the kind of world it was and what it was like to live there.

"You don't have a mate?" she asked.

"No." I replied.

"Your people are not very open about mating are they?" she said rather matter of factly.

"Well, no. To be honest, I've mated... made love more in the past 24 hours than I have in many weeks. Rider's don't have much of social life, I'm afraid." I told her.

"Hmmm, Alan... my Alan isn't going to like that. He did...  
does... like to mate."

"Yeah, his face is going to be black and blue if he doesn't land me in jail."

"Jail?" she asked.

"It's a place where we put our criminals..."

Another puzzled look.

"Oh dear. I'm not sure I should explain that one."

She shrugged and accepted my word.

"What do you look like... in your world?" she asked.

I asked for a pencil and paper and then we spent a minute trying to translate that one. Finally, she handed me the slate and a stylus. It seemed that you could use a stylus to write on the slate if you needed more detail.

I sketched out what I looked like and did my best to get a pretty accurate sketch. Many Riders were right-brain oriented and tended to be artists or musicians, so the drawing looked pretty good.

"Oh," she gasped when she saw the drawing.

"File that," I said to the slate. Ruth may want to see that.

"You don't have fur. And your mouth... your nose... they're so small... how do you breathe? Where are your ears?"

I didn't know how to answer this. It was as if someone asked me why I have five fingers on a hand. It just was.  
br /  
We spent the rest of the evening talking about her Allen. It seemed that he was a rather passive fellow, a "beta" wolf I suppose. With this predominately female dominated culture, her behaviour towards him and thus towards me yesterday, made sense./pre 


	8. A helping hand

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"Chapter 8 - A Helping Hand

We sat there staring at each other for a while, uncertain how to resolve this issue. I knew this technique would work - she didn't want to risk her staff. What could I say? I wouldn't want to do that in her place either.

The wall slate broke the silence. "Ruth, there's a call for you... a gentleman who's here on campus in the sociology area..."

"Put him on," she told the slate. The picture was the professor!  
He looked out from the screen with concern.

"Ruth, Alan...", he said, "I read about the situation - I would like to help. I want my Alan back."

I turned to Ruth - "How could he know?"

"We don't keep secrets here... all of the data and events are on public record. I imagine one of the news servers probably flagged the information since you were involved." she replied in a matter-of-fact way. I could see that this was going to be a tricky culture to deal with.

Then it struck me... Alan's mate - she must know about all this too! "Ruth, what about Alan's mate? She must be beside herself..."

"I spoke with her when I first discovered you weren't our Alan... she would like to see you before you go."

"How did she take the news?" I asked.

"Not well, but well enough considering the situation. She decided to stay out of the way. She misses her Alan too and wants him back. I've been keeping her up to date on all of this." Ruth replied.

The sound of a throat clearing came from the wallscreen. "Ahem,  
my friends... Is there anyway I can help?" The professor's face was lined with concern. I quickly explained the problem and Ruth gave her concerns. "I see," he said quietly. "I think I have a solution then... send me."

"What?!" Ruth nearly yelled. "Not possible. You're not even in this project. If I lose you..."

"You lose an old man who already has lived a long and interesting life. And such a punishment - I get to live another life on a new world..." He was practically grinning - or hungry - it was hard to tell. I could tell that Ruth was about to explode - but that she knew he was right."

"I hate this," Ruth finally said, "Get over here as fast as possible."

The Professor arrived about half an hour later and asked to see me alone before being prepared for the 'trip' to my Earth. I led him to 'my' office and we stood there for a moment in awkward silence.

"Why did you have sex with me?" he asked.

"I... I... It it seemed like the right thing to do at the time,"  
I stammered, looking down at the floor.

He stood silent for a moment and then walked up to me, putting his arms around me. He gave me a strong hug and then ran his fingers down along my sheath, through the thin cloth of my robe.  
I felt a warmth run through me.

He smiled. "I thought so. You do not mate with other males back home do you?"

I shook my head. "N..no"

He nodded his head. "I thought not. That means that it's my Alan who's reacting to my touch. It means that he still responds to me. Deep down - he still finds me desirable."

I thought about this for a moment... I suppose it could be true.  
It could also be that he was grasping at straws.

I spent some time with him, explaining how the culture I came from worked. He was a sociologist here and so was a surprisingly good choice for someone who would be able to at least cope with my culture if not fit in. I knew that if he didn't make it back,  
he'd have to learn quickly to fit in as best he could.

"Your culture sounds very violent and unhappy," he remarked offhandedly. I could tell he wasn't being offensive, but just making on observation. He was right. Relative to his world, ours was violent and unhappy.

I nodded. "Yes, I suppose you would see it that way. It's not a perfect place. On the other hand, we have privacy and we have monogamy - we have a sense of commitment your people do not seem to have."

He tilted his head just a little to the side and made a small sound which translated as 'thinking'... much like our hmmming.  
"What leads you to think our culture doesn't have a sense of monogamy? Because we don't have taboos against sex?"

"Well, yes. If you select a mate - you should stick to just that one person." I replied.

"That's your culture with its tremendously repressed sexuality speaking. You think of sex as a commodity - a possession you do not want to share - a property to protect. We do not share that view... and you're mistaken about monogamy - most of our people select a single mate and we mate for life." he paused for a moment.

"Oh? Then what about you and Liah, Alan's mate? And all these females who have wanted to have sex with me... am I wrong - but I get the impression that Alan would have had sex with them." I quipped.

"I'm sure he would have," the Professor returned. "And your point? You forget that no matter what, Alan would come back to his mate. To us, our mate is the person we wish to live with -  
to grow old with - to share our lives with. Would you say that having dinner with someone other than your mate is being disloyal?"

"Of course not! That's not the same thing at all!" I couldn't believe such a comparison.

"Isn't it?" he replied.

"No, sex is intimate. Eating isn't."

"Depends - I know people for whom eating is a religious experience." he replied. "Perhaps the problem is that you treat eating as a passionless activity and sex too much as a passionate activity..."  
br /  
I stopped think about this. I wasn't sure I could deal with this idea. Just then Ruth walked in and escorted the Professor to the lab. "It's time," she said./pre 


	9. not quite like home

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"Chapter 9 - Not quite like home

I watched as they helped the Professor into the lounger and carefully assembled the coil array around his head. They gave him a light sedative to help him relax and fall into a the light sleep which would be necessary for the transfer process.

The wallscreen showed his state and signalled when his brainwave patterns suddenly changed signalling that the crossover had happened. At that moment, Ruth gave the Professor's body, now inhabited by Rob Leeson. No point in trying to explain why he was in the body of a well built, but elderly male wolfen. He'd be out for the entire six hours we figured it would take.

Ruth came over to me and told me to relax. I hadn't noticed but I was tensing up in anticipation - partly over the Professor and partly because I knew what I had to do next. "I'll go and see her now... there's little more I can do to help until the Professor gets back."

"Alan... he does have a name you know. Why do you keep calling him that." she asked.

"Because - I think I may be starting to feel something for him and I don't want to. Let's keep it impersonal for now." I said,  
feeling ashamed.

Ruth gave my muzzle a little lick. "Don't worry. This will all work out."

I nodded.

Ruth handed me a slate. "It's programmed to guide you to Liah's place - your place. You should get going."

I nodded again and headed out. The slate guided me to the underground tube terminal and then interfaced with the tube computers to get me home. I climbed the stairs, very unsure of where this was going to lead.. .and more than a little afraid I'd just make things worse.

The place seemed dark and quiet.

"Liah," I called out.

"In here," came the sound of the first voice I'd heard here. I followed it to a room which seemed to serve the same function as a living room. She was sitting on a low couch. "I was waiting for you - Ruth told me you'd be here about now."

I sat next to her. "Look, I'm sorry..." I stopped. How do you apologise for something which wasn't your fault?

"Don't be. They say that there's a good chance I'll get my mate back. It wasn't your fault and you've done everything you can to help. It's just that I miss him. I need him back."

She wasn't kidding. It was like the Professor... he needed Alan too.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she placed hers atop mine.  
"You don't smell exactly like him anymore..."

"Different mind set - difference hormone reactions. That'll pass when he gets back, I imagine, but you'll smell me on him for a while. " I said and smiled.

"Did Ruth tell you about the Professor?" I asked.

"Yes... I'm not surprised. I'd have gone if Ruth had suggested it." she replied.

"Liah... may I ask you an indelicate question?" This really wasn't the right time, but I had to know. "Do you what relationship the Professor and Alan had?"

She smiled. "They were lovers. Still are, although Alan seemed to spend so much time with his work... and with me. I felt badly about that..." She stopped and looked at me. I guess my surprise was unexpected.

I sat there thinking trying to put this together. "But - didn't it bother you that he had someone else in his life?"

She looked honestly puzzled and surprised by this. "Another person? Who?"

It started to feel like a massive communications screw up. "The Professor..."

She visibly relaxed at that. "I don't think you understand. The Professor is Alan's lover... they are... were companions. They enjoyed each other company. They had sex... but I am Alan's mate. I have no doubt of his loyalty."

I shook my head. This was beyond me so I gave it up.

We spoke of what my home was like - the curiosity about my home world was widespread it seemed. She asked me about how things were and was surprised that women were generally not held as equals to males. We talked about the kinds of foods I ate and was repulsed by the idea of actually killing animals for meat.  
It seemed that they used a plant based system to 'grow'  
meat-like vegetable materials.

That fit in well with their very ecological lifestyle. Their houses were mostly underground with small entryways above ground. She took me outside and showed me the beautiful forest around her home.

We walked through the woods and talked about our two worlds.  
About her Alan. And then, in a small clearing, we made love.  
Afterwards, she held me and cried a little and simply asked,  
"Please, bring him home to me."

We gathered up our robes and returned to her home in silence. As I prepared to return to the lab, I turned to her and gently licked her muzzle. "Don't worry, I'll get him back in one piece.  
Anyone who could inspire such love should be with the ones he loves."  
br /  
She smiled and touched my muzzle and walked me down to the tubeway./pre 


	10. a cure for what ails you

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"Chapter 10 - A cure for what ails you br /  
The slate guided me back to the lab and as I walked in, the Professor was just waking up. I waited for him to speak - was this Rob or the Professor?

"Alan's alright." were the first words he said. You could hear the explosion of air around us as everyone let go of their unconsciously held breath.

The team took the Professor to the main team room and we started interrogating.

"The good news," he started, "is that they spotted our Alan even faster than we did him." He pointed at me. "Turns out that your Rider technology is way ahead of ours and they spotted the brain wave changes almost immediately."

He quickly explained what had happened. Their Alan awoke to a group of scientists who quickly determined what had happened.  
They had questioned Alan rather harshly until they realised that this was a first contact with a truly alien world.

"When I arrived, Alan was doing well and was already working with them to try and figure out how to get back. Not surprisingly, they caught me immediately too. Between us, and the information you gave me to pass on to them, they drew up plans for a transceiver which will be ready and on line in seven hours and twenty-three minutes." the Professor told us.

He gave us some frequency and field alignment information and we began to assemble the required parts for our side of the transmitter.

As I worked alongside Ruth, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were missing something. This device was going to set up a resonance field which would make the transfer easier - in fact,  
anyone should be able to Ride with this device... but why did we need a brain in the field? The system only augmented resonance effects in two brains, but why brains?

"Ruth," I said.

She made a questioning sound as she continued wiring the assembly she was working on.

"I asked this before... why a brain?"

"What?" she asked and stopped working for a moment. "What do you mean, why a brain?"

"Well, why does there need to be a brain in the loop?" I asked.  
"Why an organic cogent brain?"

She looked thoughtful. "Well, your people are far more the experts on this, but as we understand it, a brain is a colloidal mass with electrical pathways. The transfer really is just a way to make these paths resonate and transfer information. I mean,  
technically, you're still back on your home world - only your brain is dumping and processing information about what Alan's experiencing and visa versa."

"Ok," I replied, "then what about other kinds of electrical pathway materials.. how about ceramics?"

"No good," she said. "What would handle the information processing?"

I smiled... this would work. "Close your eyes for a moment..."  
She did. I tapped against the delicate shell of her canine ear three times. "How many taps," I asked.

"Well, three of course." She seemed puzzled.

"Did my brain help yours?" I asked.

"Of course no...t" She stopped in her tracks.

"Let me guess - your people never had a Morse Code." I tried to say, although the' Morse code' came out as a scrambled gibberish. "I mean a code system of taps to represent letters."

She thought for a while.. "Yes, I think we did - centuries ago before the network was established... I see your point. A symbol set to communicate across the parallel worlds. But it just won't work - we don't have any references in common."

"Oh? How about me? I'm going to remember most of this." I said.

"Yes, but no as we remember it - you're translating internally using our Alan's data set and your own. It's a mishmash of our world and your world's interpretation of our world."

"There's numbers... you could count in binary from one to ten."  
I added.

"Binary... oh yes - an early way to design simple state computers. Ours don't use binary. They're quantum analogue."

"Ok, but binary still works."

"Yes..." she said.

We spec'd out a sphere of ceramic material with a single ring of silver deposited around the circumference. I had to remember a slew of numbers about frequency and alignment as well as the local magnetic field density and what seemed like a million other minutiae. Unlike a radio, tuning this device would be hairy so it was best to get it right the first time.

As the transfer moment approached, we agreed to wait one hour after transfer and then install the transceiver and try to start communications with a simple binary pattern from one to ten,  
then the addition table, the multiplication table and then we could start trying to establish communications.

Ruth handed me a slate which has a simple image on it:

"That's my name in my language on it. I know you can't read it,  
but it should be simple enough to remember it. I'll send an image of it as a rectangle of two primes... that way you'll know it's us." she said.

I stared at the symbol and burned it into my mind. Next it I saw Ruth and knew I would never forget her. I also knew that I would never see her again and suddenly, that thought was unpleasant. I ushered her into my... into Alan's office.

"Ruth... I..." I started to speak.

She put a finger on my lips and stopped me. "I know," she said quietly.

I sensed a sadness in her and realised that my feelings weren't mine alone.

We stood there for what seemed to be hours, not saying anything.  
What was there to say? In less than an hour this body would be inhabited with their Alan who was mated to Liah and would think of Ruth as nothing more than his supervisor.

I would be a mere 81 milliseconds away, but an infinity. We would never see each other again, except in our dreams.

We occupied our final hours with various system checks and last minute messages from their people to ours. We rechecked the transceiver system to make sure I had the specs right - Ruth was drilling me hard o n the numbers. I could tell she didn't want me to forget even one detail.

Finally, the time was up.

I sat in the chair and relaxed as they assembled the field coils around my head. A small jab in my arm and suddenly the room started to blur. I shouted out "RUTH!" and it went dark./pre 


	11. a distant tapping

pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;" Chapter 11 - A distant tapping.

When I opened my eyes, the Rider technicians team were huddled around me removing the field assembly. "I made it back," I said somewhat flatly.

"Alan, you don't sound too thrilled to be back." Colonel Geering said.

"No no... I'm glad to be back. It's just that a lot happened and I'm very tired." I replied - not untruthfully.

He led me to the transceiver console. I could see by the clock that Ruth would start sending signals in less than half an hour.  
I'd been out that long.

My mind was a jumble - the drug they'd used on this side must not have cleared yet and it was making thinking difficult. I held an image of Ruth in my mind and focused on it, writing down the specs for a ceramic sphere to match Ruth's.

Quickly, the Colonel had a duplicate made up and I assembled the slightly changed field coil array. We suspended the sphere in the right place and I aligned the ring to the field coils according to the number's Ruth had etched into my mind. We switched on the array and waited as the final minutes passed in silence.

Then nothing.

I asked the Colonel to leave the system running and went to catch some sleep in the anteroom. I was exhausted and the disappointment of not receiving a signal was almost too much.

I don't know how long I slept there - but a technician burst in.  
"A signal - we've got a signal," she shouted. I leapt from the bed and pulling a robe around me, sprinted to the Rider chamber.  
Sure enough, short and long hisses were reverberating through the chamber as the computer dutifully recorded each sibilant.

I quickly programmed the console to display the pattern. The binary was clear. Zero, one, two, three, four, five, then a long marker. Then the same again. Then zero, zero, zero. Zero, one one. Zero two two... and so on. But only up to five.

The multiplication tables followed, but again only from zero to five. I had no way to explain this... we had said zero to ten...  
Unless... they used base six arithmetic. No... how could any advanced culture use base six?

Finally the multiplication tables ended and a stream of ones and zeros started and I was on pins and needles until the last extra long dash finished signalling the end of the pattern. My hands shook as I programmed the computer to count the bits and then rearrange them into a rectangle of dots...  
br /br /  
End./pre 


End file.
